Teasers, giving a sneak preview of a new solution that will solve all your problems. These are often completely unintelligible for someone outside the organization in question, they are generally professionally made and uploaded by the creating agency. I think they want to advertise their skills more than anything else. And they hardly show any intranet page.

Demo’s, giving an overview of functionality, managing content etc. These generally show parts of the intranet and are often created in-house (using a simple tool like a recorded web conference or screencast software).

A blend of the two.

The date of upload does not give much information about the date of creation. At least I hope so, since some recently uploaded video’s look rather outdated.

There is a large variety in subjects, approach and style, but if there is one popular theme it is “science fiction” (think Star Wars, galaxies, robots etc.)

Most of them promise the solution to common functional issues, like “no more different versions of documents”, “easier to find colleagues” but surprisingly few focus on real business value.

Some of the more noteworthy, in my opinion, are the following:

Usually intranets focus on communication and employee productivity. So it was a nice surprise to learn that this intranet is “doing its part to make DBS a fun place to work”. Picture sharing is also a more important feature than I have seen before, especially for a bank! Note: Unfortunately, this video has since been removed from the internet.

The new intranet video for Pierre & Vacances/Center Parcs groups contains a lot of obscure animation, but it has such a happy feeling about it that it made me smile. Well, this is a holiday company, so that is very suitable!

I was really intrigued by this one. It has a rather spacey animated intro, then switches to a traditional “talking head” video with the CEO. The executive has a very modern message: Global Container Terminals has a new social intranet, the name has been determined by contest, and he announces the winner. But he is sitting in a rather outdated office with some very interesting accessories – what is that worn wooden box doing there, or did he forget to remove his suitcase from his desk? Whose are those pictures? I had to watch it 3 times: the first time to watch the CEO, the second time to watch his office, and a third time to hear the message. See it here!
(If there is any learning from this video it is: “remove all visual distractions if you want to focus on the spoken message”…)

And this is the one that started this all. Some people think it is over-the-top, but if your company is called MAN Diesel and Turbo, you make heavy engines and your intranet is called Atlas, you do not feature pink glazed cupcakes or white fluffy rabbits in your intranet teaser. Instead, you show molten metal, welding sparks, powerful words and add heavy music. I think it is brilliant!

This is my list. Do you know any intranet launch/introduction video’s or teasers that should be added to the collection? Please let me know!

11 thoughts on “More than 30 Sneak Previews to intranets”

I find it somewhat strange that many of these video’s take the movie trailer perspective to announcing a tool to do your day to day work. It creates the wrong expectations -as if an intranet is a fun roller coaster ride, just sit back and enjoy the amazing show.

And why is it that this sort of stuff is done for an intranet.. do people also make a movie trailer for a new version of SAP? Undoubtedly the reason is that an intranet is one of the few software tools where we believe communication professionals should get involved. These people then go ahead and plan a product introduction that will blow your socks off.

One big push to get people to understand that time, effort and money has finally paid of in the intranet we have all been waiting for is quite contrary to how most ‘productivity tools’ are adopted.

They are mostly adopted through peer-to-peer instruction on features that are beneficial in solving a certain problem. Something like Excel is never launched, but where used ‘productively’ employees show each other pivot tables, data sources, data validation, conditional formatting and what have you. Complete information systems are build around this functionality.

What would be more beneficial to uptake of an intranet is if there are incremental improvements and mentors to advocate these and take feedback in to fine tune the existing or plan for some incremental update. This might require new roles (functions) outside a communication or IT department to support ‘information workers’…

This also requires a continuous effort on both the technical and the soft side.

Hi Nico, thank you for your thought-provoking response. I agree with you that some of these could well be a waste of money, which could have been spend better on proper training. On the other hand, I do not know the company cultures behind these video’s, and perhaps they have played an important role in their own environment. I only hope that they have done other things to help collaboration besides making a video and sitting back.
I also do not mind if an intranet has a fun element to it, if that makes working on it easier. As long as it ultimately leads to saved time/effort and reduction in re-invented wheels, anything goes! And you know I am for “employee productivity” rather than for “internal news channel” when it comes to intranets…

Nice post! wow, I never knew people put that much time in videos to launch their intranet! Maybe the fact they proudly launch it in such a big way might say something about how painful their previous intranet was 😉

Hi Wim, I was also surprised to find so many, considering the fact that these are essentially internal matters. You may well be right about their previous intranets, or perhaps they had a large introduction budget :-).